Obama's crowd downsized by 50K

The audience for President Barack Obama’s convention speech just got a lot smaller - and Republicans think they know why.

The Democrats’ decision Wednesday to move Obama’s acceptance address from the outdoor Bank of America Stadium to the indoor Time Warner Cable Arena means about 50,000 fewer people will be able to see the speech in person.

Democrats said the move was due to weather and safety concerns: The Weather Channel is predicting a 30 percent chance of rain on Thursday night, with isolated thunderstorms.

But conservatives pounced, asserting the move had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with Obama’s inability to fill Bank of America Stadium. The stadium, the home of the Carolina Panthers, has 73,778 seats. The arena, where the rest of the Democratic National Convention is taking place, has a maximum capacity of 20,200.

The Republican National Committee quickly labeled it a “speech downgrade.”

“Busing people in became very difficult because of the length of time it takes to bus people in, unions were not busing people in, they didn’t have a reliable base to add 70,000 seats, so weather became the convenient excuse,” Brad Blakeman, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, said on Fox News, later adding: “Can’t they afford a Farmers’ Almanac? All you have to do, and planning goes on a year in advance, is look at the weather patterns.”

Many also gleefully retweeted Brad Panovich, a meteorologist at Charlotte’s NBC affiliate, who wrote “there are actually very little weather concerns Thursday night” and said the “severe threat is almost zero.”

Democrats said 65,000 people had tickets for the speech, and another 19,000 people were on the waiting list. Ticket-holders will instead get to participate in a conference call with the president on Thursday.

In 2008, Obama gave the acceptance address at Invesco Field in Denver in front of more than 80,000 people.